Cult Corner: ‘An Evening At The Improv’ Shows The Best Comedy Lasts Forever

When we talk about streaming culture, we’re usually enthusing about what’s new, but one of the best things about streaming is how it’s made old and obscure cult hits available to a new generation. Presenting Cult Corner: your weekly look into hidden gems and long-lost curiosities that you can find on streaming.

Timing is everything in comedy. So, watching An Evening At The Improv, a popular and ground-breaking stand up comedy series from the 1980s and early 1990s, is as much an exercise in being a comedy fan as it is being a cultural anthropologist. Many of the jokes don’t resonate the way they used to. Some of the featured comics are complete nobodies today, while others feel like kitschy characters that personify the time period. The show is a strange window into how we responded to comedy differently only a generation ago.

And yet, as much as the sets on An Evening At The Improv are full of dated references, they reveal universal truths about stand up comedy. Well, perhaps they reveal THE universal truth of comedy: it’s all about commiseration.

That’s probably why Martin Lawrence‘s set about relationships and break ups and the dubious glories of being a bachelor is as funny now as it was then. Technology changes, and fashion evolves, but human insecurities last forever.

An Evening At The Improv might have been lauded at the time for introducing up-and-coming stand up comedians to a cable television audience, but today its main appeal is seeing established stars in their youth, honing their voice. The show offers glimpses of a nubile Adam Sandler and a fresh-faced David Spade. You can see the likes of Bridesmaids director and Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig in his stand up days. It’s entertaining to see how much these comedy heavyweights have changed in the last two or three decades, and how much of their intrinsic comic natures have always been on display.

For instance, Larry Wilmore has been making headlines for his charged commentary on current events since The Nightly Show debuted earlier this year. This clip from one of his early stand up sets at The Improv shows his penchant for political humor. He starts the bit by sharing a story about a prank he likes to play on elderly relatives with hearing aids. It’s clever and fun, but Wilmore doesn’t really grab the audience by the balls until he brings Ronald Reagan to task.

What I found most fascinating, though, is how An Evening At The Improv confirms that comedy has always fought the same battles, courted the same controversies, and illuminated our shared human experiences, but that audiences now respond to comedy differently.

Today, we see what happens when the internet nitpicks the twitter history and early work of rising stars like Trevor Noah. Older generations of comics never had to worry about this level of scrutiny. Billy Crystal hosts one episode and his set features jokes where he talks about seeing Jaws with a black audience and he does an impression of “midget wrestlers.” It was considered harmless in the 1980s — and in fact, Crystal tries to take racists to task in the same set – but it would probably raise eyebrows in 2015.

Of course, what’s also revealing is which sets are still popular today. Which clip is currently ranked the most popular on Hulu’s An Evening At The Improv page? Ellen Degeneres‘ bit about getting massages and dealing with “stupid people.”

Is the set popular because DeGeneres is so famous or is she so famous because her comedy has universal, inoffensive appeal?

In any event, An Evening At The Improv is one of those series that’s a must-see for all hardcore comedy nerds, and a fascinating curiosity for casual comedy fans. It’s a cult classic because of its historic significance (and because many modern audiences probably missed it when it was on a fledgling network called A&E). [Watch An Evening At The Improv]